On Jan. 13-15, the world’s largest retail conference and expo kicks off at the Javits Convention Center in New York City. NEC retail experts are putting the final touches on demonstrating how its leading-edge video analytics technologies transform the in-store experience for shoppers.

Visitors to NEC’s booth #1936 will tour a virtual store to see first-hand how these innovations bring better engagement with customers, while also delivering tangible business benefits for retailers. Video analytics solutions powered by the NEC Enterprise Video Analytics (EVA) platform enable retailers to garner extensive insights into shoppers:

This deeper understanding of shopper behavior can then be used to enable the ultimate, frictionless personalized shopping experience and make checkout and other in-store processes more efficient and effective—for retailers and shoppers alike.

During the event, NEC will focus on four areas of the retail experience—Customer, Operations, Analytics and Marketing, all powered by the NEC video analytics platform services. An in-booth tour starts with self-registration using NEC facial recognition software, which in turn enables multiple touchpoints and experiences throughout the booth.

Improving Store Operations

Big Show visitors also will get a glimpse of how facial recognition and data analytics assist retailers behind the scenes as well through improved business operations. NeoFace Watch uses real-time face recognition to provide retailers with an effective, transparent loss-prevention system. NEC will show how retailers can use this same technology to manage employees’ time and attendance as well. Additionally, booth visitors will get a first-hand look at NEC’s industry-leading point-of-sale hardware devices.

Up-to-the-minute sales data analytics helps retailers survive and thrive in this competitive marketplace. Reliable sales data and reporting enable tailored in-store offers to customers, plus aids in managing inventory and staffing. While in NEC’s booth discover ways analytics can be used to track demographic and traffic data related to in-store shoppers. Using facial recognition systems retailers are able to track repeat customers at a location without collecting any personally identifiable information. This information in turn helps drive marketing content and analyze purchase patterns.

Experience Fast, Frictionless Transactions

NRF expo attendees will also have the opportunity to interact with NEC customer Cali Group’s face-based kiosk when visiting NEC’s booth. The facial-recognition kiosk, now being rolled out at CaliBurger locations, shows how easy it is to deliver fast and truly frictionless transactions. Guests will peruse a menu, choose items and then pay for their virtual purchases without pulling out their wallets or personal devices. Face-based payments someday may replace credit cards as customers look for a more personalized experience like face-based kiosks without the long lines and wait times.

Representatives from the Cali Group will be on hand in the booth to answer questions about the innovative use of facial recognition technology in the Quick Serve Restaurant (QSR) industry.

As the manager of sales engineer and operations for NEC Corporation of America, I have seen numerous changes in contact center technology, but one thing was the same – technology drove the solutions – until now. We have moved to an environment that is significantly more consumer driven, and those needs drive the solution. What makes this most interesting from the standpoint of contact center technology is that the technology is moving beyond the contact center and into the rest of the organization.

According to Carmela Fairchild, contact center technology expert at dvsAnalytics, workforce optimization is being used in financial areas such as credit collections, for higher education and in hospitality. In all these cases, the uses are beyond a traditional call-center environment. Organizations realized that the amount of data that can be accumulated in the call center could be used to assess customer experience, responsiveness and overall effectiveness of many other departments. For example, a reseller of automotive parts with more than 1,400 locations throughout the United States and Canada realized that call center technology would empower it to record all the phone calls to its small locations, providing actionable data.

We see a similar trend with our customers, and find that there is increasing interest in deploying contact center technology for uses outside the traditional center.

“I used to spend most of my time speaking with contact center executives, but now I spend 90% or more speaking to CIOs and CFOs who realize the power of this solution and how it can positively impact their business,” said Mary Irwin, solutions architect for NEC Corporation of America. “Organizations realize that data can be retrieved via this technology, and that they can provide better customer engagement by routing calls so they are answered, rather than going to voice mail.”

Irwin went on to say, “Tracking the entire organization has become important so they can ensure the right information is given to the right people to do their jobs more effectively. It’s more about solving a business problem rather than tracking call times or other metrics.”

Organizations are focused more on customer engagement than ever before, with an eye to self-service as well as getting answers to questions quickly and efficiently.

Customer engagement is a metric that is here to stay, particularly as consumers become more sophisticated in their technology use and also increase their expectations. So what else is in store for contact center technology?

The Future is About…

“Even with all the best technology and self-service capabilities, I believe that voice will become the de facto standard for escalation. When consumers cannot get what they need by other methods, speaking with a live expert is the next logical step. However, I do see it improving via the use of speech analytics,” said Fairchild.

One trend we all agree on is that contact center technology will start to include gamification. Reasons include:

Agent retention and motivation

Competitive differentiation

Improve operational efficiencies

According to Gartner research, by the end of 2015, more than 40% of the top companies will be using gamification to transform their business operations. Therefore, workforce optimization solutions will need to provide the framework to support the trend.

Multiple media, sometimes called multi-channel or omni-channel, will expand significantly in the years ahead. Virtual queuing, or what we used to identify as “callback,” will become the rule as opposed to the exception. Companies are learning that virtual queuing can vastly improve their first call resolution while keeping customers happy.

For more information on how contact center technology can support your operational initiatives as well as future needs, visit our recorded webinar series where you can learn more about NEC’s latest contact center innovations, why they are so important and which are appropriate for your organization.

Ensuring a positive customer experience across your organization requires an understanding of how the customer interacts with every facet of the company. In the past, that has been a difficult task, primarily due to the segmented nature of most companies – accounting does not always speak to sales, and customer service may not regularly chat with engineering. The good news is there is a solution that has been in play for many years, and when deployed across your entire organization, positively impacts and improves customer experience. What is it?

Contact Centers (and Their Tools)

“Contact centers have moved from reactive to proactive. In the past, the focus was to provide service with the least amount of overhead, and the metrics were reflective of that trend,” said Peggy Murphy, manager, sales engineering and operations, NEC Corporation of America. “Today the focus is shifting toward satisfying or exceeding the needs of the customer while using analytics and metrics to optimize the workforce. The result is the contact center becoming part of the overall customer engagement strategy that supports a company’s competitiveness.”

With today’s customer firmly in the driver’s seat, companies must find unique and creative ways to leverage their existing resources to meet customer demands. Fortunately, there are savvy people who can provide good answers, if they have the right tools. This is where technology plays a significant role.

As a solutions engineer for NEC Corporation of America, I speak with customers every day who are embracing the value of contact center data and how they can utilize it to improve operations. Associates are now empowered to ensure that customers are cared for, even beyond the traditional contact center team. Today, everyone is expected to provide excellent customer service. Technology supports this effort by opening up the resource pool to encompass the whole company, along with providing analytics and tracking across the organization, rather than just within one department.

Beyond the Basics

The call routing engine for UCE Contact Center (CCDesign®), UCE ACD (CallCenterWorX), makes it extraordinarily easy to deliver customers to the best agent that is capable of handling their call. Add in the Management Information Systems (MIS) Global Navigator for real-time and historical reporting, along with key management tools for supervisors, and you have the right infrastructure.

Now, improve your customer’s experience with queue announcements customized specifically for each department, and inform callers of how many people are ahead of them in the queue or provide an idea of when they will be answered, and you’ve set expectations that you can meet. If the wait is too long, offer them a variety of callback options.

Don’t be afraid to ask how you’re doing! Using After Call Survey, offer callers the opportunity to answer a few key questions at the end of their call to confirm you’re providing great service or let them help you improve through their responses!

Expand how customers communicate with your company by routing Web Chat and Email interactions directly into your contact center so you can track, escalate, report and view all interactions together.

Many organizations have invested in contact center technology to support customer service efforts. The good news is this technology has continued to progress so that today’s analytics are robust and provide excellent metrics for both contact centers and other departments that utilize the system.

“Today the ability to evaluate recordings for training and coaching purposes is significantly improved. In addition, live monitoring tools are readily available via multiple devices, including mobile, to ensure consistency in customer service quality,” said Carmela.

Call recording technology has changed dramatically in recent years. Traditionally, limited meta data was available to insert into recordings, and organizations believed they had an acceptable call recording system if they could find a recording based on the date and time the call was made. If they didn’t have the date and time, it was like searching for a “needle in a haystack.” The meta data now being inserted into call recordings for search and retrieval has expanded significantly to also include:

The dialed number and the customer’s number

Agent ID and name

Call direction and call type

Agent skill group (i.e., English/Spanish, premium customer, etc.)

Customer or patient identifiers

Call results, such as sale, no sale, first call resolution

Speech analytics is used to identify satisfied or dissatisfied customer interactions

Positive or negative customer survey

And much more

The benefits do not stop there. Encore integrates with the UCE Contact Center for robust call and screen interaction recording as well as workforce management optimization to ensure that customers can be served regardless of how they choose to interact with the organization, as well as when they choose. Customers are much less tolerant of wait times and will not stay on hold. The most efficient way to ensure you have the right team in the right place at the right time is via workforce optimization.

Quality management that allows supervisors to evaluate agent and customer interactions and which, in turn, improves performance in the contact center

Reports that help to continuously optimize processes and provide pertinent feedback to other business units

NEC’s Encore customers have stated that they have benefitted from improved agent performance, more effective handling of dispute resolution, better quality customer interactions, and reduced worries about compliance. In fact, a customer recently told us: “Within two months of implementation, our agent coaching and feedback sessions improved dramatically. Agents producing in the bottom third of sales production increased their evaluation scores by 25% and their sales per hour more than doubled!”

“Our primary goal is to ensure our customers have the most effective, efficient, easy to access, tools in hand to ensure excellent customer engagement,” said Murphy. “That is why we are committed to continuing to innovate our solution, merging proven technology such as unified communications into our already robust solution, so our customers can feel confident they have everything they need to reach their customer engagement goals.”

To ensure you are on the right track for great customer engagement, visit our recorded webinar series where you can learn more about NEC’s latest contact center innovations, why they are so important and which are appropriate for your organization.

Business intelligence is only powerful if it is easily accessible. By putting the end-user in the driver’s seat, businesses can maximize analytics and data without putting a burden on the IT department to run reports. Not only does this improve productivity, it puts the data in the hands of those who can do the most with it. Frankly, this level of end-user empowerment is a solid-enough reason to upgrade IBM’s Cognos software to the latest V10.2. But don’t take our word for it. Take a look at the impact first hand.

Cincinnati Zoo Saves more than $100,000 per Year

The Cincinnati Zoo was challenged with increasing attendance and revenues while also enhancing the customer experience. It also needed to boost sales on food and in the retail outlets and optimize labor costs. These are no small tasks! By implementing IBM Cognos V10, the zoo was able to utilize business analytics that allowed the zoo staff to use iPads to track the information real-time. The results were incredible.

“By being so closely aligned with the day-to-day interactions within the zoo, the team could spend more time with visitors and see even the most basic of changes that were needed, said Marti Walsh, Channel Enablement Program Manager with IBM Analytics. “For example, perhaps traffic patterns showed that moving a hot dog stand to a different location would result in heavier traffic to the stand. That could be marked immediately on the spot, rather than waiting to return and transcribe notes into a database.”

The ability to empower end users makes sense when the user interface is easy to use and allows for quick adoption. Cognos V10 has a more streamlined interface that is easier to navigate, making it more readily adoptable for end users who want to simply access and understand the data.

Another major component is collaboration between co-workers and other departments. Cognos V10 incorporates collaboration within the interface, so that threads are maintained and data is kept within the platform, rather than having to utilize a third-party system for collaboration and communication.

“End users don’t stay put, so mobility is key, particularly if the focus is to capture and analyze data real-time,” said Marti. “With Cognos V10, users can literally analyze on the go with systems that work whether they are connected or disconnected.“

Even with the mobility and dynamic analytics functions, the system has very fast response times and handles very large data volumes. Using Dynamic Cubes increases the performance of the tools and allows for end users to slice and dice data with a fast response time, keeping them happy and focused on analyzing data.

Make Better Business Decisions – in Real Time

By putting analytics in the hands of everyone, businesses will benefit from having information in the hands of those best suited to take action. Cognos Business Intelligence allows for integration with the next logical step – predictive analytics. By adopting business prototypes quickly, companies are now able to build out corporate solutions faster than before. “What If” and scenario modeling help determine next appropriate steps giving the business a more prescriptive solution.

In Your Corner for the Cognos Upgrade

Of course, the next logical question is how to tackle the upgrade. While the benefits are certainly proven, tackling an upgrade of any type requires thought and process to ensure the most seamless approach is taken. That is where NEC Analytics team can help.

NEC is largest global systems integrator, and has more than 50 years of experience in the North American market alone. We leverage our rich history coupled with partnership experience with IBM and others to ensure a positive outcome.

Our analytics team focuses on Performance Management, Integration, Total Performance Outsourcing (which includes design, deployment and management) and Smart Predict Solutions designed to meet the specific needs of our clients (you can learn more about our analytics solutions in this short video).